Islam Karimov, UZbekistan president

Uzbekistan has temporarily suspended travel to and from Ebola-hit African countries, and issued an alert about visits to Western and East European nations.

And surprisingly, the country still includes Nigeria and Senegal among countries whose nationals are barred from entering the country, despite their clean bill from the World Health Organisation, since last month.

The Central Asian state’s anti-Ebola commission has banned anyone travelling from Guinea, Sierra Leone, Liberia, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Nigeria, Senegal and Mali from entering the country.

It also ordered that “security measures” to be put in place to deal with passengers arriving from the United States, Canada, the UK, Spain and Germany, where there have been cases of the deadly virus, and from Russia, Belarus, Moldova, Australia and Japan where cases have been suspected.

Uzbekistan is a landlocked country in central Asia, with unitary constitution.Its economy relies mainly on commodity production, including cotton, gold, uranium, and natural gas. Despite the declared objective of transition to a market economy, it continues to maintain economic controls which deter foreign investment and imports in favour of domestic ‘import substitution’.